You have more time: Google Maps’ awesome timeline switcher gets a new deadline
- The big deadline for switching the Google Maps timeline has been extended
- It stores timeline data exclusively on your smartphone
- Google gives you control over how long your data is kept
Earlier this year, Google announced that the Google Maps Timeline feature – which tracks where you go over time – would only be available on phones in the future, with the web portal expected to close by the end of 2024. Now it looks like if you want to keep your data, you have a little more time to make the switch.
As noted by 9to5Google, Android Policeand others, a significant number of users are receiving emails and on-screen alerts stating the June 9, 2025 deadline. If you want to keep the timeline data you saved to the cloud after that date, you’ll need to move it before the deadline on your Android or iOS phone.
However, that revised date may not be the same for everyone: I receive a message on my phone stating the deadline is April 6, 2025. Google previously said that users will be given “approximately six months” from their first notification about this to move forward, so it may depend on whether you’ve already been warned.
To be sure, load Google Maps on your phone, tap your account photo (top right), then choose Your Timeline. If you want to keep your data on your phone in the future, we will guide you through the process step by step. At the same time, you can select how long timeline data is retained.
What’s going on?
Google has offered an optional Location History feature for years that tracks your comings and goings through your phone. The Timeline – available through the Google Maps apps and website – is the user-facing part of Location History, allowing you to go back in time to view places visited and trips made for a specific day, week or month.
While some users are understandably reluctant to let Google keep so much information, Timeline seems to be quite popular: people use it to relive vacations and road trips, to find that coffee shop they really liked and visited two years ago, and to make sure that their travel expenses are in order, for example.
With the changes happening now, the timeline data is no longer stored in the cloud or available on the internet, but rather lives on your phone. Googling didn’t say too much about the reasons why, but probably privacy and data security are the most important. Additionally, Location History (including settings for deleting older data) collapses completely into the Timeline.
While encrypted backups will still allow users to move timeline data between devices in the future (for new phone upgrades, for example), the shift will be inconvenient for those who like to explore their travel history via Google Maps on the web, or who use various devices that contribute to this.